Want To Row? Test the Waters.

"The idea of rowing one of these elegant little boats has always appealed to me," Kimberly Nugent, 44, of Hyattsville says midway through her first week of rowing lessons with the Washington Rowing School.

Nugent, a part-time legal secretary, works two eight-foot oars into the water almost without a splash, slowly gliding in a single-seat training shell on the pancake-flat Anacostia River near the Bladensburg Waterfront Park marina in Prince George's County.

"It looks so intriguing from shore," she says. "I always wanted to try it."

In the water nearby are fellow students Susan Dorn, 50, of University Park, a managing partner in a D.C. law firm, and my daughter, Mary, 17. After just three evening sessions, each about 90 minutes, the three women have learned enough sculling to "drive backwards" all the way to the bridge carrying the Baltimore-Washington Parkway across the river, then back again -- a two-mile run.

The 18-foot training sculls are made of lightweight plastic and, at 45 pounds, are not much heavier than two cases of beer. The seats are on small rollers that glide back and forth along tracks as the boats slice silently through the river at about 10 mph.

"It's like flying," says Dorn, who tried unsuccessfully to get her 15-year-old daughter interested in rowing and then decided to try it herself.

"Beginners are usually surprised at how quickly they can get the basics down," says instructor Cynthia Cole, 50, who putt-putts alongside the newly minted rowers in a small motorboat, using a megaphone to correct mistakes and encourage good technique.

Egrets prowl the shore as the women work their way up and down the river. Ducks and their fuzzy chicks flit nearby. Two herons the size of lawn chairs stand stock still. A fox appears and disappears in an instant. Beer cans and soda bottles drift by and plunk against the shells.

"The Anacostia is a great learning river because it's flat and quiet," Cole says. "No jet skis or motorboats making waves like down at Georgetown."

Cole took up the sport in 1975 in college. After 12 years as an economist with Communications Satellite Corp. in the District, she turned to rowing and teaching full time, serving as president of the Potomac Boat Club from 1995 to 2002 and coaching area teams, most recently as head coach for the crew team at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda. She founded Washington Rowing School last year, with seven boats and boundless enthusiasm.

"Beginners are always afraid about falling off," Cole says. "But rowing is a sport that has so much going for it. A great workout, being outdoors on the water and learning -- maybe losing one's self, really -- in a kind of meditative dance of breathing, balance, timing and motion.

"I do this instead of going to a psychiatrist," Cole says with a laugh. "It's a kind of Zen for body and mind."